02.27.09

Summary: Novell brings its Mono development tools to proprietary platforms and ignores the TomTom-imposed warning signs.

SEVERAL days ago we stressed that Mono is intended to ratify Microsoft's .NET as a 'standard'. This was the explanation provided by one person and evidence is quite extensive. The following new article from Heise shows that Novell is bad influence not just to GNU/Linux users but also to Mac and Windows developers, whom Novell is trying to lure into .NET using its development framework, MonoDevelop.

A blog post by Mono development team member, Miguel de Icaza, has announced plans to bring a stable version of MonoDevelop to Windows. There is currently an alpha version of MonoDevelop available for Mac OS X.

Patent suit tells us why we should shun Mono, Moonlight

Microsoft has shown the world exactly how friendly it is towards open source by going to court to claim damages over patents which have been allegedly violated in an implementation of the Linux kernel. And that’s a good reason why FOSS users should avoid Mono and Moonlight like the plague.

[...]

He was then asked by Mozilla engineering vice-president Mike Schroepfer whether there would be the same protection if one downloaded and then distributed the code for Moonlight

“There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell,” he answered and was then forced to admit that “as to extending the patents to third parties – you have to talk to Microsoft.”

That’s exactly what Microsoft was saying to TomTom before it sued the GPS maker on Wednesday – talk to us and sign a licensing deal. Is that what FOSS users want to do – pay royalties for using software?

[...]

Only OpenSUSE has Mono in abundance – why, Evolution, the default mail program is dependent on it and once you remove Mono, you have to bid goodbye to Evolution as well. But then there should be no surprise about this – Novell owns OpenSUSE, a project which is facing some problems right now.

Novell should really know what it’s doing. As Byfield points out, Novell knows the wrath of patents. Now, if only he didn’t just characterise us as the “anti-Novell lobby”… typo there in “Go-OOO” as well. It’s Go-OO or Go-OO[XML]. There is no “Go-OOO” but there is Go-Mono[nono], which can only hope to be The Real Thing. All of these Novell projects are strengthening Microsoft. █

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The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again